Overview

The Continuum API allows other programs or user interfaces to interact with the Continuum platform. Since the API is based on REST principles, it's very easy to write interactions with the system. You can use pretty much any HTTP client in any programming language to interact with the API.

Required Knowledge

If you plan to interact with Continuum through the API, you should be familiar with the following:

JSON and/or XML

Web services and RESTful APIs

HTTP requests

One or more programming languages, such as Python, Ruby, Javascript, PHP, Perl, C#, or C++

As an Argument

If using the querystring option, the valid values are xml, json, and text.

Immediate vs. Eventual Results

In most cases, the results from an API call are timely and accurate. However, when automation is involved, an API client will likely need to implement a polling mechanism to check statuses, etc.

For example, the list_tasks command will immediately return a list of all Tasks. There is no delay.

However, some API commands initiate a Pipeline, Task or other sequence of automation, the final results of which are never immediately available.

For example, the initiate_pipeline command will kick off a Pipeline, which could take a while to complete. However, the initiate_pipeline command will immediately return with information about the Pipeline Run (status, identifier, etc).

In this case, a client should then use the identifier to occasionally issue another command, such as get_pipelineinstance, and check the progress of the Pipeline.

Obtaining Metrics via API

It is possible to query the API for various summary metrics for Continuum objects. Using the metric API endpoint http://localhost:8080/api/metric